February 4, 2010
The students of a school I’ve just finished a project at have written a tonne of fantastic food poems based on my piece “A little bit of food”
A little bit of rice
A little bit of pea
On my plate for my tea
Rice, pea
Rice, pea
Rice, pea
Rice, pea
A little bit of banger
A lite bit of mashe
In my belly for a tasty bash
Banger, mash
Banger, mash
Banger, mash
Banger, mash
A little bit of jam
On some toast
In the morning I love it most
Jam, toast
Jam, toast
Jam, toast
Jam, toast
A little bit of curry
With a poppadum
Tastes great but it burns my bum
Poppa-dum
Poppa-dum
Poppa-dum
Poppa-dum
Littlebit of food
On my plate
Eat it all up, feeling great
Feeling great
Feeling great
Feeling great
Feeling great
By Joseph Coelho
These year two students planned the writing of their poems with their teacher by filling in an outline of a fridge with their favourite foods!
February 1, 2010
This is a great exercise to trick young people into writing (cue evil laugh) I used this exercise for the first time the other day and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly the kids took to it.
1) Start the session by giving everyone a clipboard with a list of adjectives on it such as… Rough, smooth, brown, green etc
2) Go through the list with the class ensuring they know what all the words mean.
3) Spilt the class into groups (3/4 per group is ideal) and give each group a pack of post-it notes.
4) Head outside and tell the class they must look for things that are rough, smooth, brown etc. When they find something they can describe using one of the adjectives on their list they must write a simile describing that thing I.E. “The tree is as rough as a crocadile” I have done this with children as young as year 2 who took to it with great enthusiasm. There should not be too much emphasis on spelling – that can be worked on back in the classrooms once the kids are reeling at their brilliant simile ideas.
They don’t have to write similes you may want to focus solely on adjectives or challenge them to write a line that uses rhyme or metaphor. The exercise can and should be adapted to suit your needs.
As with everything – let me know how you get on.
January 19, 2010
I was pleasantly surprised yesterday to be presented with a wall of poems inspired by an outdoor session I led with a year two class.
I asked the class teacher how she managed to get such well strucutered poems out of the class. She said she simply left them to create their own poems based on the similes they had found in my session without any rigid modelling. The pieces are fantastic and testament to how innate poetry can be to young people and to what can be created if we are brave enough to give children full ownership over their work.
Joseph Coelho
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Directed and Devised by Jonathon Lloyd
Co-written by Joseph Coelho
Showing until 20th February
www.polkatheatre.com
“An Invite From The Queen”
A musical in a book
Words by Joseph Coelho
Music by Matthew King
Illustrations by Neil Irish
Narrated by Griff Rhys Jones
Order online
www.hmdt.org.uk
Blogs:
www.poetryjoe.com
www.twitter.com/poetryjoe
www.inbetweenwriting.wordpress.com
www.litandspokensc.wordpress.com
January 14, 2010
If you like the game 20 questions – where one must guess smothers identity by asking a series of yes/no questions, you’ll love this.
This can work for any age as the students
Ask the students to look around them for something to pretend to be. It might be a pencil, a whiteboard, a tree in the playground. Make sure they don’t say what they have singled out as this will spoil the fun later on.
Once they have chosen their subject get them to write from the perspective (point of view for the younger ones) of that thing. Choose something yourself and give an example. I.e.
A tree
1) Look
I am tall, thin and brown with spiderey limbs. My hands are stretched out to the sky.
2) Mood
I am happiest when birds nest in my hair and rain soaks my feet.
3) Touch
I have hundreds of soft velvety hands and a hard rough body.
Ask the students to read out their descriptions. The rest of the class must then guess what they are. If students are finding it very difficult allow yes/no questions for extra clues.
Let me know how you get along.
Joseph Coelho
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Directed and Devised by Jonathon Lloyd
Co-written by Joseph Coelho
Showing until 20th February
www.polkatheatre.com
“An Invite From The Queen”
A musical in a book
Words by Joseph Coelho
Music by Matthew King
Illustrations by Neil Irish
Narrated by Griff Rhys Jones
Order online
www.hmdt.org.uk
Blogs:
www.poetryjoe.com
www.twitter.com/poetryjoe
www.inbetweenwriting.wordpress.com
www.litandspokensc.wordpress.com
January 12, 2010
A great way to get kids thinking of themselves as writers is to ask them to draw themselves as writers. I had some great pictures drawn today featuring lap tops, laps with no tops (type writers to you and me) healthy snacks, a writers satchel and of course giant pens and pencils.
January 10, 2010
I first came across this exercise in Sri Lanka where it proved to be a great way of interacting with a group where there was no common language – all you need to run this exercise are the words “copy me” or as they say in Sri Lanka “Copy Karana”.
1) Get your group into a circle and tell them to copy you.
2) Proceed to enact a journey using sounds and actions – no words.
This is where the fun is to be had – will you ride a bike, swim across a ravine, swing like Tarzan, eat something nasty?
3) Now with the original version you can simply get the participants to have a go – but because we’re interested in literacy we’re going to go one step further. Once you’ve completed your sounds and actions story ask the class what happened making it clear that there is no right or wrong. Very quickly a story will develop. Be sure to ask the participants’ questions like “who is the main character?”, “Why are they on that motor bike?” “What colour is the motor bike?” etc.
4) When you’ve heard lots of interpretations of your sounds and actions story you can get one of the participants to have a go and afterwards explore interpretations of their sounds and actions story.
5) Now send your participants off into groups so that everyone gets a go at creating a sounds and actions story.
6) After ten minutes or so depending on the size of your groups (allow enough time for everyone to have a turn) get your participants to go off and write a trailer style description of their story.
Joseph Coelho
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Directed and Devised by Jonathon Lloyd
Co-written by Joseph Coelho
Showing until 20th February
www.polkatheatre.com
“An Invite From The Queen”
A musical in a book
Words by Joseph Coelho
Music by Matthew King
Illustrations by Neil Irish
Narrated by Griff Rhys Jones
Order online
www.hmdt.org.uk
Blogs:
www.poetryjoe.com
www.twitter.com/poetryjoe
www.inbetweenwriting.wordpress.com
www.litandspokensc.wordpress.com
November 27, 2009
This week I have been working in two schools in Essex for Creative Partnerships consulting on ways of improving literacy skills using outdoor apparatus. I’ve worked on several projects like this over the years and it always amazes how much of a benefit can be gained by taking children outside and getting them to engage with the environment. Through working this way we have managed to teach the year two children about metaphor, simile, onomatopoeia and alliteration in a fun, active and exciting way and in a way that they will remember since there are now concrete memories associated with the lines they have created. At one point one of the students came up to me with a twig which he proceeded to snap asking for confiramtion that it was a “snapping” sound he could hear so that he could write a line using onomatopoeia.
Naturally using the great outdoors does come with its challenges – just two minutes after venturing outside on one session the heavens opened up but as the children ran back into class they spied a rainbow. The class were literally yelping with joy – from that one incident we had an array of fantastic lines – one child said “Winter is as white as a frozen rainbow” .
Many schools seem to be taking this idea of outdoor learning on bard with some even building outdoor classrooms. I wish such iniatives had been around when I was a child ( a child who could not sit down for very long)
If you would like to know how you can incorporate outdoor learning in your school please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
